The Heat Movie Review

Here’s an original concept: There are 2 cops.  One is a straight-laced, plays-by-the-book, super-serious officer of the law and the other plays by their own rules, is raunchy and unpredictable.  Somehow they get teamed up and must work together.  How will they ever make it work?  Will they learn a few lessons, have a few laughs (and a few drinks) and then become best friends?

Okay, so the concept behind The Heat isn’t new.  It’s not even old.  It’s ancient.  But if you get a good director and cast together and toss in a decent script, you can make it work.  The Heat, for the most part, does a good job at it.

The plot: An FBI agent teams up with Boston cop to bring down a drug lord.  That’s as cliché as it gets.

Director Paul Feig reunites with the scene-stealer of his previous film, Bridesmaids, Melissa McCarthy and they join up with Sandra Bullock to deliver a female buddy-cop comedy.  Bullock isn’t known for comedy, really.  She will play the fish-out-of-water in most of her comedic films (The Proposal, Miss Congeniality) and this one is no exception.  It’s what she’s good at.  McCarthy also plays that lone cop part as well in this film - she's difficult to work with in the prescient and has been ostracized from her family because she arrested her brother.  So, it’s two loners used to working alone that are forced to work together.

There’s nothing special with the camera shots or the writing and at times the movie suffers from T.M.I. (Too Much Improv) which I personally feel is becoming an issue with comedic actors in films nowadays.  The opportunity to catch magic and let the cameras keep rolling falls flat as the joke tends to run on longer than necessary.  This film has McCarthy in a few of those moments.

Don’t get me wrong though, this was an enjoyable film.  It had quite a few good laughs but I found it culminate from the supporting cast (Marlon Wayans, Thomas F. Wilson, Adam Ray and Bill Burr, Kaitlin Olsen, etc) as well as at Bullock’s expense rather than originating from McCarthy who is arguably the one who is supposed to carry the film on a comedic level.  But that’s what makes Bullock a good actress – her ability to react.  McCarthy is just a different version of the same character from Identity Thief and Bridesmaids which is a millennial version of Roseanne.  Funny and raunchy, but she needs some versatility.

Now that I’ve brought your expectations down a bit, I can say that overall in a summer filled with sequels and comic book movies, The Heat is simply a good action-buddy-cop-comedy that is fun and refreshing, nothing more, nothing less.  3.5 out of 5 stars.